Apps, publishing and architecture: Russia goes futuristic

Russian online banking app Instabank brings Facebook authentication to a new level, Italian architect Massimiliano Fuksas sets out to build a new home for the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow, photo-browsing service Cooliris performs positively in the Russian market

Source: press photo

Italian
architect Massimiliano Fuksas and the Russian architectural bureau
Speech recently won a competition held by the Educational Centre of the
Polytechnic Museum and Lomonosov Moscow State University and are now in
charge of creating the new building that will house the museum.
According to Fuksas, quoted in Architizer,
the idea for the project came from the desire to communicate with the
architecture of the past and at the same time come into conflict with
it. Gizmodo
compares the complex with an iceberg of irregular form, whose 4 parts
symbolizes the four natural elements. Both sites agree that the project
is noteworthy. “[...T]his newcomer is a copper-clad beauty,” - writes
Eric Limer from Gizmodo. The opinion of Archtizer
is simple but counts as a full endorsement: “Keep an eye out for this
exciting project!” The readers are impressed with the project too. User ahentwiggles
named the building the new Russian Fortress of Solitude. “That building
looks pretty awesome. Kind of wish public works like this were more
prominent”- another user, atatassault47, commented.

Exciting
news this week come from the financial sector. “TMT Investments, a
UK-headquartered venture fund backed by Russian businessmen, has
invested $350,000 in Graphicly, a US startup that helps publishers and
self-published authors produce and distribute text and visual content on
major digital publishing platforms.” - EWDN
announced. Headquartered in Palo Alto, this startup also received the
support of TechStars, 500Startups, Mercury Fund, Tim Draper, Dundee
Venture Capital and Lowercase Capital. To date it has been used by 6.000
publishers.

Related

Photo-browsing
app Cooliris, another Silicon Valley based project, expanded in Russia
earlier in February. After its first 2 months in business, the startup
reported that Russia has consolidated its position as the 5th country
for total new downloads and 10th for number of users. The latest version
of the app, which was released on April 4, introduces the concept of
"endless discovery" - a new feature that enables users to access a wider
range of images, offering a deeper integration with social networks
such as Facebook, Instagram and Flickr. Cooliris’ CEO Soujanya Bhumkar
told RBTH: "We're thrilled with our success in Russia – we are seeing
extremely high engagement from Russian users with Yandex.Fotki and other
sources in the Cooliris iOS app. We look forward to furthering our
strategic partnerships in Russia to make media with messaging the best
experience in Russia. Pixels are indeed the new decibels."

Instabank, a new Russian online banking service (similar to Simple),
provides users with the ability to make a transaction via mobile app by
verifying their Facebook account, according to a report by Venture Village.
The service is now at an invite-only stage. Venture Village’s Nina
Fowler wonders “How will customers feel about mixing their personal
finances with social interactions on Facebook? For Instabank, will
customers be willing to go for a solution that isn’t branded to look
like part of an established bank?” RBTH will delve deeper into these
issues in a special report to be published next week.